Camp taste is, above all, a mode of enjoyment, of appreciation – not judgment. Camp is generous. It wants to enjoy [… and] it doesn’t sneer at someone who succeeds in being seriously dramatic. What it does is to find the success in certain passionate failures.

October 2016 – Sore Bottom Guys

In naïve, or pure, Camp, the essen­tial element is seriousness, a seriousness that fails. Of course, not all seriousness that fails can be redeemed as Camp. Only that which has the proper mixture of the exaggerated, the fantastic, the passionate, and the naïve…

Twenty years on from that BBC news report, very little has improved, proving that even today – when conversations surrounding mental health are more open than ever – there is still work to be done.

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May this humble game serve as official notice to the entire world: I hereby declare British Lads Hit Each Other With Chair to be Gay Culture, the shared communal legacy of LGBTQ+ people everywhere. Legs were scary bastards remember when they were an official supporters club but were banned.[/quote] If you actually read the study ( I kiss them because I love them: The emergence of heterosexual men kissing in British institutes of education) it never claims kissing is just a simple lad greeting, and in fact the word “greet / greeting” appears only once in the paper. (pg. 422: “Thus, a kiss on the lips has not been part of the historical repertoire of greetings or demonstrations of affection among men for centuries in Britain”)The purpose of those traps is to hide a third way: an intersectional history of solidarity, especially in the UK. In 1984, Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners (LGSM) supported mineworker unions against Thatcher during the national strike, and in turn, miners supported gay rights movements and pushed against the 1988 anti-gay law, Section 28. This was a political alliance forged long ago by our elders, proof that we can all organize together. Conceptually, the allusion to pro wrestling culture is exactly what these lads are trying to perform. This connection to wrestling is also why I swapped out the video’s weird patio chair for a proper metal folding chair. In terms of formal game design, the chair rain offers a useful ramp for wordlessly conveying game progression. Hopefully players get the sense that something is escalating out of their control. I never explain how this chair rain happens, it just suddenly comes out of nowhere, a bit like the surreal rain at the end of the film Magnolia (spoiler). You could easily interpret these chairs as societal pressure from an unseen audience, or as a divine desire to hit you when you’re down. It echoes the cosmic irony of the gods thwarting every second of the lad’s life.